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Team G Team TAC 2010 Icaria909 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Icaria909 Senior Member United States Joined 5594 days ago 201 posts - 346 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 72 21 December 2009 at 9:45pm | IP Logged |
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Alright, time for a TAC challenge. I've never done a TAC challenge, but I am hoping doing this will create a certain amount of accountability and give me that last bit of motivation to keep up the long process of language learning. For those who don't know, I am part of Team G for Team TAC 2010, and we are learning Spanish and Russian.
For Spanish: Overarching Goal- to Become completely fluent. To be fluent to the point that I will know Spanish as well as I know my mother tongue, English. I plan on being a historian geared towards Spanish History and I plan to take university courses at the University of Madrid at some point, so I have a very great incentive to learn the language. Prior Experience- I took Spanish for four years in middle school and high school and received As and Bs (highish grades). However, it wasn't until recently that I discovered how little I learned from the courses. For example, I was taught that when you see "y" and "e" get translated to "and" in books, you say "e" when you want to sound dignified. Much to my chagrin I discovered my teachers were wrong and that you use "e" when it's followed by a word starting with a vowel or h+vowel. So I am completely restarting my Spanish education and starting from square one. Materials- Fortunately, I have accrued quite a few Spanish materials to learn from. So far, I have several books written completely in Spanish (literature ranging from Cien Años De Soldad to La Casa en Mango Street), Teach Yourself Spanish Grammar, and lists upon lists of vocabulary, I have written down half a dozen sites where I can listen and read in Spanish, and I have bought a few audio tapes to play along with books. Team TAC 2010 Goals_ 1. Reading- My goal is to be able to read "easy" literature like La Casa en Mango Street, which is a small chapter book, but is not as complicated as the Magnum Opus of a columbian philosopher. 2. Listening- I hope to be able to understand 75% of what is said in Spanish songs and on the radio. 3. Writing- I hope to be able to communicate on at least a basic level, like being able to write a paragraph in this forum that is understood by Spanish speakers. 4. Speach- I plan to be able to at least speak well enough and without hesistation on basic topics, and be able to talk about more specific things like soccer and politics. For Russian: Overarching Goal- I have always been fascinated by Russian history, especially the soviet era. In fact, there have been times when I thought I might want to be a sovietologist (social scientist who studies the former USSR). With many cold war documents still left untranlated and stored in Moscow, it would be very beneficial if I could gain at least near fluency in Russian in future. Prior Experience- My prior experience in this language amounts to zilch, nada, or nothing. Beyond glazing over a few Russian names, I have no prior experience with this language. This does leave a certain level of excitement and adventurism that I don't have for Spanish (because I have been listening to it for a few years). Materials- My materials for Russian are more limited than Spanish. I have Berlitz Russian and Michael Thomas, as well a number workbooks: Learn Russian the Fast and Fun Way, Russian in 10 minutes a day, and a second edition of Schaum's Russian Grammar. I also listen to Slot, a russian band, and voice of russia online. Part of my motivation for doing TAC was definitely to see what Russian materials others were using as well.... Team TAC 2010 Goals_ 1. Reading- I want to be able to read basic articles in papers, as well as comments made by others in the forum. 2. Listening- I would be ecstatic to be able to understand 50-60% of spoken russian. 3. Writing- dealing with the cyrillic alphabet means that I hope to be able to write enough to at least get across basic thoughts. 4. Speaking- I would be satisfied to be able to speak on most basic topics such introductions, directions, etc. Because I have more experience in Spanish, my progress in this language will most likely be much faster and more pronounced than my progress in Russian. Just a side note for why my goals are different for each language. WHooh.... long post. Just so everyone who may read this knows, I gladly welcome any criticism towards my learning methods, and corrections done to my writing or understanding of the language if anyone notices I had made a mistake. I hope this is a fun experience and I look forward to my first post of progress in a week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachjunge Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 7168 days ago 368 posts - 548 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2 Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 2 of 72 22 December 2009 at 12:51am | IP Logged |
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Greetings, teammate! Let's make it the best TAC ever!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5473 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 3 of 72 27 December 2009 at 11:15am | IP Logged |
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The teams are set... So as we say in France, "Bonne chance et surtout bon courage!" (good luck and above all be brave!)
It's probably on purpose, but I've noticed that your production goals (speaking and writing) are much less ambitious than your comprehension goals. By the end of the year, you'll probably be able to do more that basic communication in both languages, especially if you learn grammar and vocab lists. I've been studying Russian for about two months now and Basic introductions and directions is A1-level, you can get there in one month (depending how long you spend each day) Then again, I'd understand if your main goal is comprehension. I mostly study Russian for the literature, so written comp is going to be my biggest goal too. Edited by joanthemaid on 29 December 2009 at 11:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Icaria909 Senior Member United States Joined 5594 days ago 201 posts - 346 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 72 29 December 2009 at 6:50pm | IP Logged |
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I feel so totally outdone by Sprachjunge's posts, so I am going to try and post more often. Here is my first update.
First of all, I haven't studied as much this week as I normally would have: I was in Wisconsin with family and they didn't have a computer, so I was away from much of my learning material....but I did get some things done. I had just finished reading A Loom of Language by Frederick Bodmer and decided to give some of his suggestions a try. He believed that there are two distinct stages of language learning and he based it on knowledge of a set number of words. He believed that it takes aproximately 1000-2000 words to be able to communicate in a language (he specifically is talking about Romance and Germanic languages, but I assume it is similar with slavic languages), and 17000-25000 to be able to read literature and books without constant use of a dictionary. So I looked up the 1000 most common words in Spanish and russian as roadmaps for early vocabulary learning. If my team members choose to utilize these resources here they are: 1. Russian- http://www.flashcardexchange.com/flashcards/view/324802 2. Spanish- http://www.flashcardexchange.com/flashcards/view/290174 I spent quite a few hours writing out flash cards from these word lists. I haven't gotten to organize them yet, but I have so far finihsed the Spanish words. I spent about an hour reading over articles in Spanish (I know, I need more study time), and the rest of the time I spent listening to my Spanish and russian songs (by the way, thanks sprachjunge and joanthemaid for listening material). For Russian, I worked on pronounciation rules and the alphabet. I spent about six hours on that. The result is that I can try pronouncing new words pretty effectively, I have a good grasp of the alphabet, and I can write it well. Quick question to team mates and russian speakers, do you learn the cursive cyrillic alphabet or do you just try and write in print form? So far I've experimented with cursive, but I am much more proficient with print. Also, I just bought an Ebook and they have so many books in other languages, Specifically a sizable collection of Spanish books. I am going to look into this a little more to find more reading materials. For the future, I will try and post about every day or every other day. I hope this makes up for my lack of recent posts. Good luck team mates! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5473 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 5 of 72 29 December 2009 at 11:20pm | IP Logged |
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Hey.
Yeah, Sprachjunge also had that effect on me. He's really gotten us started for this year. I say we make him team captain. ( Don't worry, Junge, it's an honorific only) Thanks for the flashcards, I'll take a look (I was going to go to bed an hour ago, but I hadn't done any postcrastination, which by the way is my new substitute for procrastination.). This team work is coming out pretty nicely, I think we're all getting something out of it. I am in any case. I'd say just stick to the writing in print for the moment, I started writing in cursive and got all mixed up because I wrote some letters in cursive and some in print. Besides I've only found italics alphabets which tell you how to form the cursive letters but not how to link them together, which is sort of the point of writing cursive. If I were you, I'd write print though because this way your writing will reinforce your reading. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachjunge Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 7168 days ago 368 posts - 548 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2 Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 6 of 72 30 December 2009 at 1:22pm | IP Logged |
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Hey guys! Again, thanks for the kind words. Oh, we are all in this together though. I already feel really inspired knowing that we're working towards common goals!
Wow, Icaria909, those lists are impressive. Thanks for the heads-up. And I definitely empathize with the flash card-writing. It takes longer than it looks. Concerning Russian cursive, it's only been a few weeks and already it's killing me, but I'm trying to keep my input all aural at this point. My goal is to familiarize myself with enough words aurally so that when I finally see them, I'm just mapping what I know are the correct sounds to their symbols on the page. That's the plan. Of course, it's keeping me functionally illiterate, so we'll see how long it lasts. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5473 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 7 of 72 30 December 2009 at 11:40pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, Sprachjunge, you're really doing this the right way! With me, it was like: hey, there's a cheap Russian book here, I'll buy it and learn Russian. And I caught up on the pronunciation little by little, so that all the stuff I've learnt recently is OK but the older phrases are a phonetic mess.
Hey, have you guys thought about a team name? As we're team G, I was thinking "Gordo", "prize" in Spanish, 'cause we're gonna win, right? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Icaria909 Senior Member United States Joined 5594 days ago 201 posts - 346 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 72 01 January 2010 at 12:31am | IP Logged |
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I agree, I like the name Gordo for our team name.
For my log, -I reviewed some russian vocabulary. Mostly easier words. -I listened to some more russian music. -and I spent more time making flashcards. right now for russian, I'm adding stress marks so I learn the words with the proper stress, but I eventually plan to remake the cards without stress marks to make sure I really remember the inherent stress marks. Russians' lack of accent marks is much more frustating than Spanish's addition of accent marks into writing... I also spent a better part of a day reading "Around the Bloc," a book by a women who traveled to Russia, China, and Cuba. She studied russian in school and spent a year in Moscow, picked conversational mandarin in china working for a censorship agency, and she sneaked into Habana, Cuba. Granted this was all in 1998, but she uses a lot of Russian and Spanish vocabulary. My favorite part of the book was each time she visited the countries she experienced a huge culture shock (she grew up in Texas, USA). I'm going to count this as only 15 minutes of study even though it took me much longer to read the book because I did get some passive studying time learning some vocab from the book. Also, from now one, I'm going to mark the hours it I've spent learning Spanish and Russian, as a way to view my progress. I've heard it takes some 400-420 hours each to learn Spanish and russian so it will be interesting to see if it's the same with me. Spanish- 2.25 hours Russian- 6.5 hours Edited by Icaria909 on 01 January 2010 at 12:32am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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